Showing that Ivan Reis can draw sandstorms and sea foam with equal poise, Aquaman #5 is a beautiful book of few words. Reis’s art gets a lot of breathing room here, with wide panels to show us the endless desert vista Aquaman finds himself in. (Where he found all this desert is another question; if Amnesty Bay’s on the east coast, did he just stay on that Atlantean jet all the way to New Mexico or the Sahara or wherever he is?) I don’t gush about inkers much (or often enough), but whichever one pulled off that muted effect to show the apparition of Aquaman’s father: Bravo, sir. It’s neat to see that softer style from the flashback a few issues ago is becoming a motif. (The softened look on that Atlantean hologram is no small feat, either.) Johns is doing all he can to keep us in suspense about Atlantis, and I enjoy the way he’s gradually teasing out information about what happened to it. This issue would have been pretty much a perfect one-and-done if not for the goofy TV monologue at the end: We get it, the world thinks Aquaman’s a joke. Please move on. Just let him be awesome without the “fish out of water” gag.